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10 bitchin’ tips for writing irresistible headlines

Can you see what I did there? A headline needs to grab the reader’s attention and make it impossible for them to resist finding out more.

If this post had been titled ‘How to write a headline’ then it’s more likely you would have ignored it, but now here you are, reading my bitchin’ tips.

Clearly not all of these tactics will work for all sites and its up to you to work out the kind of headlines that are most attractive to your specific audience, but in general these are a good place to start.

So, here’s the tips…

Numbers win prizes

List posts are an incredibly overused tactic, but the ugly truth is that they still work.

If you cast your eyes to the ‘Most popular posts this month’ feature on the right of this page then you’ll see that headlines with numbers in them are very effective.

And this image of Buzzfeed’s homepage shows how much it relies on numbers to make its posts shareable:

The reasons for the enduring popularity of lists posts are fairly obvious. People want easily digestible articles and are often curious to find out what examples or tips have made it onto the list.

Readers want to know that they’re going to get their money’s worth, so the more tips, hints and examples the better.

Adjectives FTW

Adding an adjective to the headline has an obvious benefit, as it makes the article sound more exciting and useful, even though the content is exactly the same with or without the adjective.

So chuck a few of these in: amazing, awesome, beautiful, excellent, useful, brilliant, powerful, sensational, terrific, unique, valuable, wonderful…. the list is endless.

And also, who’s to say these tips you’re reading actually are bitchin’? That’s the beauty of including an adjective in the headline, it’s all subjective and it’s unlikely that anyone is going to make a formal complaint because the tips aren’t quite bitchin’ enough.

Pique their curiosity

Not all posts can be list posts, so another technique is to pique the reader’s curiosity so they are compelled to investigate further.

This means writing statements that make it seem like the reader will be missing out if they don’t click on your article.

Take these examples from Upworthy. They’re pretty vague and don’t say much about what is contained within, yet they do a good job of making the reader interested in finding out more.

Sell the benefits

A headline is like a mini sales pitch, so telling the reader how they stand to benefit can help to encourage those extra clicks.

You basically need to explain why reading the post will benefit the reader or make their life easier in some way.

Name check a celebrity or well known brand

Celebrity culture is alive and well, so why not exploit it for your own ends? If you put a celebrity’s name in the headline then it’s likely that people will recognise it and want to find out what that famous person has been up to.

Even if it’s using the name in a slightly obscure way, such as ‘Justin Bieber’s guide to digital marketing,’ it will still make people curious as to how you’ve drawn a link between the two.

PR professionals seem to embrace an air of superiority when it comes to the owned/earned/paid debate.

PRs have traditionally crafted stories that win or lose by their storytelling craft. If the story isn’t powerful enough then the journalist will slam the phone down in a rage and never speak to you again.

Whereas on the paid side of the fence, the feeling is that content with a big media budget behind it can reach (or be pushed in front of) a wider audience, whether or not it is any good. And that that’s just wrong.

There has been a lot of excitement about Google Now but the real story is about how it opens up a window on users’ whole lives.

If ‘data is the new oil’ then Google just found a much bigger oil field.

I recently gave a talk at Marketing Week Live about what Big Data analytics was starting to do for marketers and how new data sources are massively expanding this.

There’s an analytics revolution going on right now with loads of new analytical toys, a massive increase in board-level interest and lots of new data to work with. This revolution is powering many of the new mobile and social media start-ups.

But do not get distracted by the service when it is what’s under the hood that counts. The really clever thing about Google Now is not the magical but-slightly-creepy-and-telepathic service suggestions but the chance that it gives Google to know you much better and more deeply than any other firm on the planet.

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